Seek Not to Alter Me
by Lorata
Summary: (Beatrice slitted her eyes at him. "You're talking about my friends." / He took another long drag of his cigarette. "Am I?") It's the big school dance, and Beatrice is utterly fed up with everyone. Worst of all, the punch isn't even alcoholic. Beatrice/Don John UST. Modern AU, high school setting, because I have no idea why this isn't a teen movie yet. Yuletide 2013.


Statistically speaking, the evening could get worse. An asteroid could fall and hit the school; an earthquake could open up beneath the building and swallow up everyone and everything in it, sending them flailing and shrieking into the pit; the whole building could go up in a conflagration, the girls running as their dresses went up in a flash of foul-smelling smoke. Except, really, that might actually be preferable to standing here, leaning against the wall and watching Pedro, the charming exchange student, slip close to Hero and whisper in her ear as the bass beat pounded overhead. Meanwhile across the room, Claudio, the jock who'd taken up art class as a way to prove to girls that he was strong _and_ sensitive, stared at them both with anxious, narrowed eyes.

Maybe Pedro would manage to sweet-talk Hero into becoming his girlfriend - or whatever - for the night, with his accent and smooth words and suave foreign manner. Maybe Claudio would finally sulk his way into her heart. Either way, Beatrice really did hope that things worked out for Hero, but of course they wouldn't, not with boys involved. Not men, these children who drove flashy cars and shaved their ridiculous stubble and posed in front of mirrors, no, but boys, and Beatrice found herself well sick of them.

She wouldn't look at _him_. He danced as he did everything, with incredible talent and an absolute lack of commitment, changing partners whenever the song changed tempo or verse. He never stuck through the same song with one girl - lucky for the girls, really, God help the one whoever changed his mind. Beatrice caught a glimpse of him out the corner of her eye, twirling one of the younger girls who'd come because her friend had a date and didn't want to go alone. She rolled her eyes.

All Beatrice wanted was an asteroid, or an earthquake, or a fire, but no, here she stood, stuffed into a dress that made her look amazing if anyone cared, holding a glass of punch that was too sweet and unfortunately non-alcoholic, and not a single boy to dance with. Not that she wanted to dance; everyone who'd asked, Beatrice turned down with a sharp voice until by senior year they all joked she was a lesbian. Better that way.

She glanced around the room, taking in the crowds of friends, the occasional couple tangled together behind the risers, the chaperones staring at their drinks with the same forlorn expression with which Beatrice regarded hers. The back door at the corner, out behind the stage, that led to the parking lot, standing ajar. Beatrice straightened, flicked her gaze to the side, but none of the chaperones had noticed. She drained her glass, wincing as the fizz and sugar stung her nose, then made her way through the crowds to the refreshments table, pouring herself a new cup of the vile pink stuff and slowly edging toward the door.

Still nobody looked her way, and at last Beatrice ducked through, making sure that the door stop stood in the way in case it closed so it wouldn't lock behind her. She stepped out into the parking lot, the asphalt hard beneath her thin shoes, and looked up at the stars, twinkling black against the sky. Much better than the string of Christmas lights the dance committee had woven over the ceiling in what was most likely a fire hazard, but not in the fun way.

Beatrice took a deep breath of the cool night air, and ended up choking and coughing as she inhaled a lungful of smoke. Someone chuckled, low and dark; she whirled, fist clenched, and caught sight of the orange tip of a cigarette in the darkness by the wall. "Who is it?" she demanded.

A piece of ash fell from the tip of the cigarette, flaming out into nothing before it hit the ground. "And yet you came out here," said John, otherwise known as Pedro's brother, the unpopular exchange student. Either his mother had cheated or genetics really favoured the elder in their country, because where Pedro was tall and strong and dark, John got the dark part but none of the rest. He pushed himself off the wall and sauntered toward Beatrice, who sucked in a breath. "What if I'd been a rapist?"

"Then too bad for you, because I keep mace in my purse," Beatrice snapped. Technically it was a small bottle of hairspray that she'd opened and tossed in a handful of chili flakes, but tell that to any poor sap who got it in his eyes and she bet he wouldn't know the difference. "Why, are you going to attack me?"

"Who, the lesbian?" John said with a sneer, but he gave her a once-over and grinned in a way that made Beatrice wonder if he doubted the rumours. "No thanks. I was just here for a smoke."

"I don't smoke," Beatrice said, right before nearly punching herself in the face. He knew that; all the kids who hung out on the sidewalk just past the edge of school property, passing cigarettes between each other and tossing contemptuous glances at the building, they all knew each other.

"I'm not surprised," John drawled. He held the cigarette between two fingers, and the smoke trailed upward in a lazy arc toward the sky. "Here, try this, then." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal flask.

"A flask, really?" Beatrice said, raising her eyebrows. It glittered in the faint orange glow from the streetlight across the lot. "That's a little cliche, don't you think?"

"Do you want the party to be more bearable or not?" he asked lazily, dangling it in front of her. "I didn't even try the punch but I know how it's got to taste. I could say the same for the conversation."

Beatrice swallowed. The smoke crept into her eyes like grit. "All right," she said, snatching the flask out of his hand and pouring a liberal glug of the clear liquid into her punch. Let him see she wasn't afraid, that being the principal's niece didn't make her boring. That she wasn't stuffy and uptight and prudish, no matter what _some people_ might say. Beatrice handed the flask back and took a sip, pacing herself so she didn't choke when the alcohol burned her throat on the way down. It sat in her stomach, warm and settling.

"There," Beatrice said triumphantly.

"Good start," John said, his teeth flashing in the dark. "Now you're fortified before you return to the teeming masses. Your school has got to be one of the most vacuous places I've ever been, and we travel a lot."

Beatrice slitted her eyes at him. "You're talking about my friends."

He took another long drag of his cigarette. "Am I?" Beatrice stopped, gritting her teeth. "I've watched you, you know, not a lot, but I have noticed. You spend all your time telling people how much you don't like them, how much you don't care, about people or society or expectations or anything like that. You talk more about not wanting a boyfriend than most people do about wanting one, and the thing is, people buy your shit." He exhales, long and deliberate. "But it is shit."

Beatrice takes another sip of her drink, just barely holding back a cough. "And how would you know?"

"You see a lot when no one sees you," John says dryly, and he's dressed all in black and even worn scuffed sneakers to the dance, really, and here he is talking about _cliches_. "I follow my brother to parties, people invite me out of politeness and because he thinks it's kind if he says he won't come if I'm not there. Except then he leaves me at the door and nobody talks to me, so I just watch instead." He studies her, head tilted. "You think they're idiots, too. You've just learned how to say it so they don't notice."

Beatrice swallows. She thinks of Margaret, rattling on about that boy she likes, the one with the absolutely idiotic name, even though he doesn't care about her other than the part where she looks a little like the attainable version of the prettiest girl in school. The weird hall monitor, Barry, and his friend, who run around getting high all the time and intercepting kids for no reason except they totally have it hot for the Principal. Even Hero, beautiful and kind and quiet, who will find a boyfriend once she finally decides on one and turn into nothing more than an accessory for him because she always lets boys control her.

"You can say it," John says. He's grinning again, slow and sharp. "You know you want to."

"If they're idiots, so are you," Beatrice snaps finally. "I'm an equal-opportunity misanthropist. I hate everyone."

"How lucky," John says. "Me too. Especially myself."

Now it's her turn to study him, the shorter, scrawnier, plainer version of his adonis brother, the boy who sits in the back of the class and snorts at the teachers and refuses to participate in sports. "People wouldn't dislike you so much if you didn't try so hard to make them," Beatrice says. His eyes spark, and immediately Beatrice flinches because she's heard that phrase before, from her uncle, from her counsellor, from all the adults who tell her she would have more friends, she would have boyfriends, if she only lowered her walls and let them in. Beatrice's heart hammers in her chest, from the alcohol or the second-hand smoke or something, she's not sure. All she knows is that she drains her glass because she's afraid she'll spill it if she doesn't.

"You'd know about that, wouldn't you," John says, and he's mocking but there's an edge to it now, bitter and defensive.

Beatrice holds her breath, then she marches over, closing the distance between them, and snatches the cigarette from his fingers. The butt is damp from his lips but she takes a drag anyway, and the smoke fills her lungs and her nose and her eyes and every part of her being with its sharp, acrid burning and maybe it will keep filling her, like a hot air balloon, until she floats away.

"Maybe I do," Beatrice says at last, coughing and sputtering on the exhale. She hands it back. John looks at her for a second, then nods. He finishes the cigarette, pinches it between his fingers and flicks it to the ground. Beatrice moves her foot and grinds it to nothing under her heel. John catches her eye, holds it, and something sticks between them like a fishhook in Beatrice's chest. For a second she forgets how to breathe, how to move.

"You're too good for that moron, you know," John says, looking out over the parking lot. Beatrice freezes. "You know who I mean. The one you spend all that time making fun of and pretending you don't care about, except that he always leaves the conversation first. He doesn't care about you. You shouldn't bother needling him when he doesn't care, it only makes you desperate."

The spell breaks under the weight of Beatrice's fury, cold and terrible, a winter storm that weighs down even the mightiest tree branches until they crack under the strain and fall to the ground in a crash of wood and clatter of ice. "You don't know what you're talking about," she snaps. "You're just the popular boy's annoying little brother."

His grey eyes shadow over, his jaw tightening, but Beatrice doesn't give him the chance to retort. She turns on her heel and stalks back into the gymnasium, the current song's peppy pop singer's voice grating in her ears. Beatrice scours the room until she sees him, standing in a corner with a glass of punch and a napkin of cheese and crackers, taking a break as he surveys the dance floor.

Fire spreads through her veins, the poison of insignificance racing through her, and Beatrice stalks toward him. She will wound him today, no matter what John said; he will feel the sting of her tongue before the dance is done.

Desperate. For _him_. It's the stupidest thing Beatrice has ever heard.


End file.
